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Bolder Saudi Arabia targets a neighbor

Wichita
Published 10:22 a.m. CT July 12, 2017

FILE - In this Sunday, Oct. 5, 2014 file photo, the Abraj Al-Bait Towers with the four-faced clocks stands over the holy Kabaa, as Muslims encircle it inside the Grand Mosque during the annual pilgrimage, known as the hajj, in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's civil defense authority says dozens of people have been killed after a crane collapsed on the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca on Friday, Sept. 11, 2015. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)(Photo: Khalid Mohammed)

The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Tuesday, July 11:

Over the past two years, Saudi Arabia has become a source of conflict in the Middle East when it formerly was a quiet, rich, conciliatory force in the region.

It is difficult to imagine a country less well structured to wage war than Saudi Arabia. It is large in area, thinly populated and ruled by an elite family, with most of its workforce consisting of foreigners. It is nonetheless well armed, thanks to its huge oil wealth, which has made it able to buy arms pretty much at will from the United States, the United Kingdom and other suppliers.

In spite of its considerable vulnerabilities, it has been able to wage since March 2015 a fairly high-intensity, destructive war in neighboring Yemen. An estimated 10,000 Yemenis have died, many as a direct or indirect result of Saudi air strikes. More recently, Yemen has been struck with an epidemic of cholera, an estimated 300,000 cases, fueled by the collapse of health care and infrastructure occasioned by Saudi bombing. It could not carry out the bombing without U.S. support through maintenance and aerial refueling.

A newer Saudi enterprise, undertaken after U.S. President Donald J. Trump gave it the green light in a May visit there, probably at the behest of Israel, is to force the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar to knuckle under to pressure from it, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, all Sunni Muslim-led states like Qatar. They have accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and want it to change its policies radically.

The four states imposed a blockade on Qatar last month and have made 13 demands, including to shut down Qatar media spearhead Al-Jazeera; cease its cooperation with Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Muslim enemy, Iran; cut various contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood and links with Palestinian Hamas and Turkey; and end its role as an intermediary among competing Afghanistan elements, including the Taliban.

Qatar has basically told the four to forget about it, unwilling to let them dictate its policies and compromise its sovereignty. In the meantime, Qatar has announced its intention to increase natural gas production, which fuels its wealth, by 30 percent over a period of years.

The United States has a dog in the fight, which makes it astonishing that Trump would have encouraged Saudi Arabia and the other three to go after Qatar. Some 10,000 American forces, plus aircraft and munitions, are in Qatar, operating from a base that also serves as headquarters for the U.S. regional war against the Islamic State. It is also the case that Qatar’s current role in the Middle East is not in general inconsistent with America’s goals in the region.

The encouraging part is that Qatar is so far standing up to Saudi demands. If those demands and the blockade are stepped up, Qatar and its friends are fully capable of striking back at Saudi Arabia and its three client states. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson now is trying to mediate the dispute. War over Qatar would be unfortunate. It then would be added to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen on the list of expensive, unnecessary Middle East scraps in which the United States is somehow involved.